4RO
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| City of license | Rockhampton, Queensland |
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| Broadcast area | Rockhampton RA1 |
| Branding | 4RO |
| Slogan | News, Talk and the Music You Love |
| Frequency | 990 kHz |
| First air date | 2 July 1932 |
| Format | Classic hits |
| Power | 5 kW[1] |
| Transmitter coordinates | Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
| Former frequencies | 1340 kHz (1932–1935) 1330 kHz (1935–?) |
| Owner | Grant Broadcasters (Radio Rockhampton Pty Ltd) |
| Sister stations | 4CC KIX Country |
| Website | www |
4RO is a classic hits-formatted commercial radio station broadcasting from Rockhampton, Queensland on 990 kHz AM.
History
The station was launched on 2 July 1932[2] and was the second station in Rockhampton - the first being 4RK, now ABC Capricornia. The opening of 4RO resulted in Rockhampton being the first regional town in Queensland, to have two stations.
Coverage of Races and Football were among the very first items to be featured on 4RO's earliest transmissions on 2 July 1932. The station was officially opened that night by Rockhampton Mayor, JT Lee.
4RO's first studio was built on the corner of East and Denham Streets in Rockhampton's CBD. The studio was on the second floor of the building. An aerial that strung between two masts on the back of the building was responsible for transmitting a power of 200 watts.
In 1953, new transmitters of two kilowatts were built at Pink Lily, on the outskirts of Rockhampton and two years later 4RO moved into new studios in East Street, in a building that became known as Rheuben House. Rheuben House was the home to 4RO until 1970 when a new building designed by architects from Toowoomba were constructed on the corner of Archer Street and Victoria Parade.
The Victoria Parade studio was officially opened by Rockhampton Mayor Rex Pilbeam on 18 August 1970. In 1982, 4RO opened a new transmission site at Port Alma, south of Rockhampton, that started transmitting a power of five kilowatts. The old transmitter at Pink Lily is now used by 4RO's Gladstone based sister station 4CC to broadcast their Rockhampton service on 1584 AM.
In 1996, 4RO was bought by Reg Grundy's RG Capital Radio. In 2000, RG Capital launched an FM radio station in Rockhampton called Sea FM. The Sea FM studios were set up inside the 4RO building in Victoria Parade. At the same time, DMG Regional Radio, launched 4CC's FM sister station Hot FM, to rival Sea FM. The Hot FM studios were built in an office in Quay Street in Rockhampton.
In 2004, RG Capital Radio and DMG Regional Radio merged to form Macquarie Regional RadioWorks, which meant the four major commercial stations broadcasting in the Rockhampton/Gladstone market were owned by the same company. The merger meant that the newly formed company was required by Australian law to offload two radio stations, as one company cannot own more than two radio stations in the same market. As a result, 4RO and 4CC were offloaded to Canberra-based Prime Media Group. Around the same time, Prime also acquired a number of other regional stations after similar events occurred in other regional radio markets - Zinc and 4CA in Cairns, Zinc and Mix FM in Townsville, Zinc and 4MK in Mackay, and Zinc and Hot 91 on the Sunshine Coast.
4RO remained at the Victoria Parade studios until August 2007, when they moved down the road into the office vacated by Hot FM when they moved to Gladstone. The 4RO studio and 4CC sales office are now home in Quay Street, near the iconic Customs House along the Fitzroy River, with the studios officially opened by Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow in November 2007.
In August 2013 Grant Broadcasters acquired the station and Prime Media's other nine radio stations in Queensland.
Current Programming
4RO's slogan is "News, Talk and The Music You Love" and the station's programming is a mixture of local and syndicated talkback programs, with syndicated music programs from their Sunshine Coast headquarters.
News Service
Sunshine Coast journalists now produce and present both national and local news bulletins that air on its network stations including 4RO during live and syndicated programming during the week. They also use the pre-recorded Fairfax news service for some of its news bulletins throughout the week, and especially on weekends.
WIN Poll
Throughout 2009, both Michael Bailey and Owen Fuller have presented the weekly "WIN Poll" on WIN Television's local news bulletin in Rockhampton, where they interview people at random on a particular subject before guiding viewers to a 1900 phone number to vote on that topic.
